Tali-Ihantala 1944

Being Finnish, it is often difficult to comment on Finnish war movies. Since most Finns have at least an elementary grasp of the timeline and locations of the events, you can understand better what is happening in front of you. This creates a situation where these movies become difficult to follow for other audiences and that's where they usually go wrong.

Let's look at the good sides first. The fact that they actually acquired proper vehicles instead of using CGI was a huge upside. The costumes, the equipment looked pretty good. The inside shots of the vehicles were good. However, all of these upsides were not enough to cover up for the confusing direction and weak screenplay. Yes, I said it, the cat is out of the bag.

The premise is good, and if the director had chosen to go the route of "A Bridge too Far" or "The Longest Day", this movie would have been much better. The greatest flaws were the lack of character development, sense of urgency from the fighting and overall confusion of what was actually happening. These were so bad that you don't even notice the horrible dialogue.

Both of the Hollywood movies I mentioned spent the first hour with character development, and the remainder showing those characters whom you had now developed a connection to, in situations where you as the viewer felt that they were in immediate danger. In T-I, there were no scenes that had the same feeling like Robert Redford paddling across the Nijmegen or the "cricket" scene from TLD.

When shooting a large scale epic like this, the HQ scenes must act as the glue that holds all of the action together and keeps the viewer in the loop for whats actually happening. Instead of the overview maps, I would have preferred to see a mapboard and commanders discussing the situation. Now you just see almost identical maps and it seems like the Russians are not doing anything, and the Finns are mounting some kind of counterattacks somewhere for no particular reason. You can see that around 90 minutes (the radio intelligence scene) they did attempt this for a few minutes, which ended up being the most enjoyable part of the movie. Too bad that the action that unfolded ended up being so anticlimactic.

I really wanted to like this movie, but I felt very disappointed with it in the end. Also, the English subtitles had some annoying missteps evident in too many Finnish DVD productions; incorrect terminology and desperate attempt to make Finns speak UK English, whereas Finns in my experience speak more like Americans with their colorful expressions.

Recommended only for hard core WW2 vehicle buffs. I suggest "Ambush" if you're looking for an actually entertaining movie about this subject.

Tali-Ihantala 1944 isn't an ordinary movie in any sense, really. There's no continuation with the characters, as the movie is basically split into several parts, between which there is no direct correlation or continuation. The parts are only woven together lightly by some "narrative" cut-scenes between them, explaining some of the major movements and events in the battles, but even so most of the time the events portrayed don't really tie in to the "large scale events" explained by the cut-scenes.

As the different parts have different characters each time, there's no character development or any major social interaction. For a large part, the actors aren't really top notch either - an unfortunate side effect of this being a Finnish film, as there simply aren't many good Finnish actors. But it has to be said that there's not even that much "real" acting to be done the way this film is made.

The main feature of the movie is the documentary-like battle scenes. The events depicted are based on real occurrences during the Tali-Ihantala battles, taken from various sources.

Of particular interest to WW2 "hardware" buffs is the part about the Finnish Armored forces. It features many authentic WW2 armored vehicles. The depicted T-34 tanks are all authentic, and so are the StuG III G assault guns. That aside, the KV tanks shown are mock-ups if memory serves, since while the real KVs that took part in those events still exist in a museum, they are not in a running condition. There's some other details not spot on as well, but that's a topic for another time.

One thing to note is that it's obvious the movie makers didn't have access to all that many tanks, as it can clearly be seen the same tanks are reused to portray tanks on both sides. It's not a big issue given the authenticity of the tanks to begin with though, and someone not more familiar with it all probably wouldn't even notice.

Most of the other battle scenes are infantry-related, which comes as no surprise since not only are they the easiest and cheapest to make, but also because infantry was the main feature of the Finnish army, since armored and air forces were very limited in size. These infantry scenes are decently made, even if nothing spectacular. Still, for many battles I ended up wishing for more sheer manpower on the screen, both for the visuals of it as well as historical accuracy.

Overall it's clear this isn't a huge-budget production. The whole film was funded in a rather unconventional fashion to make it possible to begin with. It also has to be said that indeed for the Average Joe this movie might not offer much, but for war buffs it should certainly be worth watching. Even for the average viewer, perhaps more names and details would've helped with immersing into the events more, and for war buffs this could've helped with finding more information on the depicted events.

It's a mixed review, I know (it's my first), so to summarize I'll just say that even with the budget-imposed limitations and often less than stellar acting, it was well worth watching for someone familiar with the events and with a keen interest on the whole war era, and I'll certainly buy the DVD as well, hopefully soon. For those with no real interest in war history and somewhat plain depiction of events however, it's probably best to look elsewhere, or at least make sure you know what to expect.

I'll add as an afterthought that I would have wished for a depiction of the Finnish Air Force's operations, but sadly it was not really possible with the film's style and budget (even the small part about the German flight group Kuhlmey is rather crude). The FAF's part and actions in the war are not very widely known even within Finland, so they'd deserve some publicity.

Is it really a movie? Is it really a fictional documentary? Neither. It seems more a reenacting amateur video, than a real movie. It's not a documentary. A documentary requires clarity, but here, after almost 2 hours, you understand nothing about the 1944 Soviet offensive in Finland: you can see the reenactment of only a very little portion of the entire campaign, basically no maps (indeed, there is a map which explains quite nothing: no names of units involved in a scale too large to be useful) and no statistics at all. But… wait! We are speaking about a movie! Is this a real "movie"? A movie requires a plot. And here I see no plot at all, just series of little sketches. A movie requires a screenplay. And here I see no screenplay, just series of little textbook-style discussions about tactics, with no emotions involved. A movie requires characters. Here we can see no character, but some people who casually run or speak in front of a camera, with no character development at all. A movie requires actors: are they actors those involved in this movie? Mmmh… A movie, especially a war movie, requires action. But here I see very few actions, not realistic at all. Last but not least: a modern war movie requires magnificence. Oh yes, my dears! If CGI is already invented and introduced in cinema industry (I'm sorry for all the nostalgic of pre-CGI era), please use it! Because, after the stunning war actions in "Save private Ryan", "Band of Brothers" and "Pacific" series, "Letters from Iwo Jima" and so on, we (the average public) want to see something better than few soldiers running in a forest, some guns firing and tank duels involving two or three vehicles. Here is all amateur style: soldiers fall crying few seconds after they are hit and even when a shell hit a tank it makes just a "piff" with a little smoke cloud. OK, you don't have budget and you can't buy "Massive" or any other CGI software, nor you can pay salaries to large crews. Well: don't try to make a movie about Tali Ihantala, the largest battle in Nordic countries. It's just like making a low budget version of "The Lord of the Rings": you can try, just to have a laugh. If you don't have budget, please, try with other subjects. Last but not least: it's a Historical delusion. Because the battle of Tali Ihantala, fought between June and July of 1944 was an epic event in Europe (sometimes compared to a "Nordic Thermopylae" by historians) and, for sure, the most important battle for Finland in Second World War. It saved Finland from the same fate of the Baltic Countries, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and all the Balkan countries invaded or "liberated" by Ussr in 1944. It is indeed a very controversial war episode: outside Finland, while the Winter War (1939-40) is broadly known and morally accepted, the Continuation War (1941-44) is always a taboo. It's a unique case of a real Democracy which fought alongside Nazi Germany against Soviet Union while preserving its own liberty inside. Why waste such an interesting subject with a poor movie like this? Well, all the positive reviews speak about the original and rare war material (especially tanks), used in this movie. OK, if you just want to see some 1944 tanks running and fighting again, just go to a reenactment event. It's much more funny.

First of all, I have to say that I had huge expectations about the movie. I went to theater to see some mind-blowing action. I was hoping that Åke Lindman had made something spectacular as his last movie. I also believed in his directing talents. Now I sadly have to say that the movie didn't fulfill my expectations.

The movie was a bit bouncing: Going there, doing that, coming back and going again. Different people fought in different places and sometimes it was hard to follow what was happening as a whole. Well this wasn't too disturbing as the movie still was entertaining. Especially all tank-scenes were amazing. The lack of money, which was clearly visible, was maybe the most disruptive thing in the movie. As mentioned in the movie, there were about 250 cannons and mortars, plus bomber planes, targeting the Tali-Ihantala area. But when the "big fight" came, it looked like about 10 guns were bombing the woods with smoke grenades (And I can say this because I have served in mortar company in the Finnish army). I'm sure it looked like that because there were not enough money to make it look realistic. I was also hoping more soldiers running in the woods because hey, it was supposed to be the biggest fight in the northern Europe!

Now the rating of the movie. I was balancing between 6 and 7. I would have wanted to give it 7 points, but as I was thinking it, the movie actually left me disappointed. It wasn't as astonishing as I wanted. It was just another Finnish war movie, and even Tuntematon sotilas from the year 1955 and especially The Winter war from 1989 are much better movies than this one.

So, should you go to watch Tali-Ihantala? a) Finnish movie business needs your money, so YES! b) If you like Finnish war movies, definitely yes. But if you decide to go watch it, don't have too big expectations so you won't be disappointed.

P.S. Not a single mortar was shown during the movie. Why? Glad they mentioned them though ;)

As always when making a film out of historical events one is challenged with the task of trying to engage the audience, usually by adding characters or embellishing characters already available thus allowing the viewer to relate and or follow the characters throughout the film.

This film is bold enough not to fall for such obvious flirtations with the audience, it has little more story than the historical facts and the characters that appear do so just very briefly. All too briefly for anyone in the audience to remember little more than a name, maybe a rank.

All in all it becomes a rather confusing experience with names and ranks and orders flying around in the Finnish forest with the only exception of a Russian tank blowing up, or was it a Finnish tank?